Recommended Decision-Making Strategies for San Francisco’s Oceanside Wave Energy Project

Abstract

As pressure to develop renewable energy increases, wave energy emerges as one of the potential solutions to the nation’s energy crisis. To displace fossil fuel generation, the City and County of San Francisco (CCSF) is pursuing wave energy as a portion of its energy portfolio. In pursuing this project, CCSF will face several challenges, including the need to understand the regulatory landscape, to move stakeholders from having conversations into a process where feedback is used to form agreements, and analyze different data layers to find preferred wave energy sites.

To assist CCSF in moving the Oceanside Wave Energy Project forward, I have: 1) outlined the basic federal and California regulations governing hydrokinetic projects and actions CCSF can take to overcome regulatory challenges , 2) identified existing decision support tools that will formalize the stakeholder process and feedback, and 3) developed the framework of an interactive GIS tool that will allow users to understand the impact of a wave energy project on different environmental and socioeconomic criteria. Together, these products help stakeholders understand the impact of a wave energy project on different regulatory, environmental, and socioeconomic criteria in San Francisco, CA.